The Clinton Administration and the 103rd Congress are in the early stages of a major review of U.S. trade, international and security relations with Japan, the principal U.S. ally and trading partner in Asia. A number of recent developments have raised tensions in this mutually beneficial relationship, which is still characterized by deepening economic interdependence and close political and security cooperation. These include the end of the Cold War, which has eliminated a common military threat; the recent renewed rise in Japan's trade surplus after several years of decline; and increasing international assertiveness by Japan, sometimes in conflict with U.S. policy.

The costs of the Social Security program, both its benefits and administrative expenses, are financed by a tax on wages and self-employment income. Commonly referred to as FICA and SECA taxes (because they are levied under the Federal Insurance and Self-Employment Contributions Acts), these taxes flow each day into thousands of depository accounts maintained by the government with financial institutions across the country. Along with many other forms of revenues, these Social Security taxes become part of the government’s operating cash pool, or what is more commonly referred to as the U.S. treasury. In effect, once these taxes are received, they become indistinguishable from other monies the government takes in.

Several proposals for major reform of the Federal income tax system, including replacement of the current tax with a new type of tax, have been introduced or considered in the 104th Congress. Among the most widely discussed are the flat tax, a value-added tax, a national sales tax, a proposal for a direct consumption tax (called the USA tax), and income tax reform. Most of these new taxes convert the tax base from an income to a consumption base, most eliminate deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes, and most flatten the rate structure--in some cases by adopting a single tax rate. While these tax revisions touch on all aspects of the economy, this paper focuses on the effects on housing.

This report the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601-1651) that eliminated or modified some statutory grants of emergency authority, required the President to declare formally the existence of a national emergency and to specify what statutory authority, activated by the declaration, would be used, and provided Congress a means to countermand the President's declaration and the activated authority being sought.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the: (1) impact of the year 2000 challenge on the nation's emergency and state and local law enforcement systems; and (2) Department of Justice (DOJ) and the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion efforts to facilitate remediation and contingency planning and to gauge the year 2000 readiness of these two important sectors."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the results of its ongoing examination of the safety and efficacy of the anthrax vaccine, focusing on: (1) the short- and long-term safety of the vaccine; (2) the efficacy of the vaccine; and (3) problems the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found in the vaccine production facility in Michigan that could compromise the safety, efficacy, and quality of the vaccine."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the key elements of partnerships between the federal government and the private sector, focusing on: (1) some of the weaknesses that are making it necessary for agencies to think strategically when managing buildings and facilities; and (2) the key elements and related experiences of the 6 federal partnerships that were created to meet these challenges."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative, focusing on: (1) how much and for what purposes federal funding has been provided for the restoration of the South Florida ecosystem; and (2) how well the restoration effort is being coordinated and managed."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) management controls over four block grant programs, focusing on whether: (1) HUD's monitoring of grantees under the Grants Management System is adequate; and (2) the Integrated Disbursement and Information Systems (IDIS) provides the data HUD needs to accurately assess grantees' performance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) International Space Station and the status of Russian involvement in the program, focusing on NASA's efforts to: (1) develop a contingency plan to mitigate the possibility of unforeseen problems, including future Russian nonperformance; (2) ensure that Russian quality assurance and manufacturing processes are acceptable; and (3) control prime contract and nonprime activity costs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the apparent discrepancies between the Department of Defense's (DOD) budget allocations and the actual obligations for direct and purchased care, focusing on: (1) the extent to which the Defense Health Program (DHP) obligations have differed from DOD's budget allocations; (2) the reasons for any such differences; and (3) whether congressional oversight of DHP funding changes could be enhanced if DOD provided notification or budget execution data."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the effectiveness of the Air Force Supply Management Activity Group in meeting its military customers needs, focusing on the: (1) extent and impact of military customers not receiving aircraft spare parts when needed; and (2) reasons why parts were not always available when needed."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the efforts that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the other federal agencies with major cleanup responsibilities have made to set priorities for spending limited cleanup funds at the hazardous waste sites posing the highest risks to human health and the environment; (2) EPA's actions to recover its expenditures for cleanups from the parties that are legally liable for the contamination; and (3) EPA's efforts to better control contractors' cleanup costs."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO discussed the status of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's: (1) investigations and recommendations; (2) pay structure and use of staff; and (3) contracting activities."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) information management initiatives, focusing on the: (1) status of EPA's efforts to create a central office responsible for information management, policy, and technology issues; and (2) major challenges that the new office needs to address in order to achieve success in collecting, using, and disseminating environmental information."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) cleanup program and budget management practices, focusing on: (1) the number of contracts that EPA has awarded for Superfund cleanup activities for the agency; (2) the extent to which EPA is using its Contracts 2000 initiative as a vehicle to improve Superfund contract management practices; and (3) GAO's perspective on the potential effects of transferring $25 million from the Superfund program's budget to the Corrective Action Program's budget as a means of increasing the number of cleanups under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)."

A total energy cycle analysis (TECA) of electric vehicles (EV) was recently completed. The EV energy cycle includes production and transport of fuels used in power plants to generate electricity, electricity generation, EV operation, and vehicle and battery manufacture. This paper summarizes the key assumptions and results of the EVTECA. The total energy requirements of EVS me estimated to be 24-35% lower than those of the conventional, gasoline-fueled vehicles they replace, while the reductions in total oil use are even greater: 55-85%. Greenhouse gases (GHG) are 24-37% lower with EVs. EVs reduce total emissions of several criteria air pollutants (VOC, CO, and NO{sub x}) but increase total emissions of others (SO{sub x}, TSP, and lead) over the total energy cycle. Regional emissions are generally reduced with EVs, except possibly SO{sub x}. The limitations of the EVTECA are discussed, and its results are compared with those of other evaluations of EVs. In general, many of the results (particularly the oil use, GHG, VOC, CO, SO{sub x}, and lead results) of the analysis are consistent with those of other evaluations.

Photoelectrons produced through the interaction of synchrotrons radiation and the vacuum chamber walls can be accelerated by a charged particle beam, acquiring sufficient energy to produce secondary electrons (SES) in collisions with the walls. If the secondary-electron yield (SEY) coefficient of the wall material is greater than one, a run-away condition can develop. In addition to the SEY, the degree of amplification depends on the beam intensity and temporal distribution. As the electron cloud builds up along a train of stored bunches, a transverse perturbation of the head bunch can be communicated to trailing bunches in a wakefield-like interaction with the cloud. The electron cloud effect is especially of concern for the high-intensity PEP-II (SLAC) and KEK B-factories and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. An initiative was undertaken at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) storage ring to characterize the electron cloud in order to provide realistic limits on critical input parameters in the models and improve their predictive capabilities. An intensive research program was undertaken at CERN to address key issues relating to the LHC. After giving an overview, the recent theoretical and experimental results from the APS and the other laboratories will be discussed.

Corrosion of spent UO{sub 2} fuel has been studied in experiments conducted for nearly six years. Oxidative dissolution in vapor and dripping groundwater at 90 C occurs via general corrosion at fuel-fragment surfaces. Dissolution along fuel-grain boundaries is also evident in samples contacted by the largest volumes of groundwater, and corroded grain boundaries extend at least 20 or 30 grains deep (> 200 {micro}m), possibly throughout millimeter-sized fragments. Apparent dissolution of fuel along defects that intersect grain boundaries has created dissolution pits that are 50 to 200 nm in diameter. Dissolution pits penetrate 1-2 {micro}m into each grain, producing a ''worm-like'' texture along fuel-grain-boundaries. Sub-micrometer-sized fuel shards are common between fuel grains and may contribute to the reactive surface area of fuel exposed to groundwater. Outer surfaces of reacted fuel fragments develop a fine-grained layer of corrosion products adjacent to the fuel (5-15 {micro}m thick). A more coarsely crystalline layer of corrosion products commonly covers the fine-grained layer, the thickness of which varies considerably among samples (from less than 5 {micro}m to greater than 40 {micro}m). The thickest and most porous corrosion layers develop on fuel fragments exposed to the largest volumes of groundwater. Corrosion-layer compositions depend strongly on water …

This safety evaluation for packaging allows the transport of nine Product Removal (PR) Cans with their Containers from the PUREX Facility to the Plutonium Finishing Plant.

We consider the s-channel R-parity-violating production of a single light top squark {tilde t}{sub 1} and its subsequent R-parity-conserving decay. For masses in the range 180-325 GeV, and R-parity-violating couplings {lambda}{sub 3ij}{double_prime} > 0.02-0.05, we show that discovery of the top squark is possible with 2 fb{sup {minus}1} of integrated luminosity at run II. If no evidence for the top squark is found, the bound on {lambda}{sub 3ij}{double_prime} can be reduced by up to an order of magnitude with existing data from run I, and by two orders of magnitude at run II.

We describe first beam collisions at the PEP-II B Factory, a collaboration of SLAC, LBNL, and LLNL. The beams are brought close to each other in the transverse (x, y) and longitudinal (timing) directions through the use of two shared beam position monitors located 0.72 m from either side of the interaction point (IP). Transverse beam-beam deflection scans and the use of a zero-angle luminosity detector allow us to center the collisions. Beam collisions were also seen by exciting one beam at its tune frequency and observing a response in the other beam at the same frequency. Shifts in betatron tunes have also been measured. To date, the peak measured luminosity attained is 5.2 {+-} 1 x 10{sup 32} cm{sup {minus}2} s{sup {minus}1} with 786 bunches in each beam and with beam currents of 354 mA for the high-energy beam (HEB) and 680 mA for the low-energy beam (LEB).